


Mary

by PangaeaWritesLotsOfShit



Series: Transtalia (let's not lie, it will be mostly England) [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, Soulmate AU, Transsexual England, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 23:31:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15651171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PangaeaWritesLotsOfShit/pseuds/PangaeaWritesLotsOfShit
Summary: Alfred was almost excited to meet his soulmate. Until the name started to fade.





	Mary

Alfred dragged his fingers over the name on his wrist before he took a crayon and stared at the paper in front of him. His mom had told him his soulmate’s name was Mary Kirkland, so he wanted to try and imagine her and then draw her. He drew a circle. You start drawing humans with a circle. She definitely was human. He stared at his other crayons before picking a brown one. He had seen pictures and statues of the Holy Mary and they all had brown hair, so he guessed Marys must have brown hair. He started scribbling a wild mop of brown hair on top of the circle. It didn’t really look like the Holy Mary pictures he had seen, but it was  _ his _ Mary. She didn’t have to be holy. She just had to like him. He decided to give her dark blue eyes (mostly because his crayon was dark blue), because then they’d match! His mom always said that his eyes were the most beautiful thing in the world, and Alfred wanted his soulmate to also have them. So he drew two big blue dots as eyes. He reached for the red crayon and gave her a big smile, because he wanted his soulmate to be pretty and happy. Satisfied with how pretty he drew Mary, he ran to his mom with the picture and asked her how to spell Mary. She drew the letters nicely for him and he copied them onto his drawing. His mom smiled and ruffled his hair, praising him and telling him he should cherish the picture until he met Mary, but to also remember that Mary could look different. Alfred smiled and nodded enthusiastically, he did not care how Mary looked because he knew she would be really beautiful! His mom asked if he wanted to hang the picture on the fridge, but he shook his head and explained he wanted it framed instead so it would never get lost or broken. His mom thought for a bit before she took the picture and then said a big word that sounded a bit like lemonade. She disappeared for a while before coming back out of her work room, giving the picture to Alfred and said she made it so that no one could rip it. Alfred was amazed. An indestructible picture! Now he would be able to always have Mary by his side.

\--

“Hey dude, you got some dirt on your wrist.”

“Where?” Alfred lifted his arm and inspected his wrist. Clean.

“Nah man, on your soulmate mark. Other hand.” Alfred lifted his other arm, frowning when he saw the smudge over Mary’s name and tried to wipe it off. It stuck. He rubbed furiously over his skin, not wanting Mary’s name to be stained. It stuck. “Can’t get it off? Maybe try soap?”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll be right back.” He got up and went to the bathroom where he scrubbed wildly over his soulmate mark with soap, wanting to get rid off this smudge over Mary’s name. He didn’t want his soulmate to be tainted! But then the bell rang and he had to go back without getting rid off the smudge.   
  
No matter what he tried the next few days, the smudge would not come off. He started asking around if anyone had experienced anything like it. People started throwing around advice and guesses, saying it had to be something with his soulmate, what made Alfred dig out his laminated drawing of Mary and stare at it, hoping it would give him answers.   


“Please don’t be deadly sick or something, I really want to meet you.”   


The picture didn’t respond.

A few days later, Alfred was rejoicing over the smudge starting to fade, whatever was wrong with Mary wasn’t there anymore! He would still get to meet her! The joy didn’t last long, however, when one of his friends pointed out that with the smudge, Mary’s name was fading as well. Alfred was devastated. Would Mary die? Did she die? Were they never going to meet? Did the universe decide that they weren’t fit for each other after all? Did she turn lesbian? No matter how much Alfred worried, he never got an answer. Staring at Mary’s crayon picture had become a daily activity now, but no matter how much he looked at the big blue eyes, the scribbly hair and the almost U shaped smile, he never got an answer. He tried drawing Mary again, to maybe reconnect with her somehow, but every time he looked at the new pictures, it felt wrong.

Mary’s name faded more and more, and one day, Alfred woke up with a blank wrist. He didn’t go to school that day and instead stayed home, crying. He had lost Mary.   


Over time, slowly, a new name started to appear. Arthur Kirkland. Aside from the same last name as Mary, Alfred wasn’t sure what to do with that information, but even though this Arthur guy was supposed to be his soulmate, he couldn’t really get to like him. It just wasn’t Mary, the girl he had hoped to meet since he was small. Arthur was new and strange.

\--

Alfred was twenty-one when he finally met Arthur. Well, more like ran into him. He was jogging to class when he noticed a weirdly shaped cloud and stared at the sky long enough to run into a soft and small body and only heard a high pitched yelp and someone falling. He plucked his earphones out and kneeled down, offering a hand.

“Sorry man. You okay?”   


“Sort of, yeah. Watch yourself next time.”

The guy he ran down took his hand and Alfred happened to catch a glance of his soulmate tattoo, what in itself wasn’t unusual, but he thought he could recognize his own name being written there in swirly writing. He pulled the guy closer instead of up, startling him, but it didn’t matter. Alfred was sure of it.

“That’s my name.” He lifted the guy’s wrist closer to his face and stared some more.  _ “That’s my name.” _ The guy finally seemed to understand, because he stopped trying to tug his wrist free. “Are you Arthur? Arthur Kirkland?”

“Yes, I am, but…” Arthur took Alfred’s hand now, brushing his fingers gently over Alfred’s own soulmate tattoo.  _ “Oh my god…” _ He started to cry.  _ “That’s my name.” _ He looked at Alfred with this huge smile behind his tears and lifted Alfred’s arm up so Alfred was looking at  _ “Arthur Kirkland” _ written on his wrist.  _ “It’s my name!” _

 

Alfred decided to take Arthur home for now. He could skip class for once, and since it turned out Arthur was a freshman and only here to visit the campus before classes started a week later, he had time as well. Alfred made them both some hot chocolate and lead Arthur to his room.  _ ‘Nothing better to get to know your soulmate with than hot chocolate!’ _ His mum used to say, and Alfred wanted to make a good impression, despite still not fully trusting Arthur, but the poor guy had cried when seeing his name on Alfred’s wrist, so Alfred felt kind of sorry for him. Arthur couldn’t help that he wasn’t Mary. He didn’t know anything of Alfred’s pain in his high school years.

“Here we go.” Alfred put the mugs on his desk and gestured to his bed. “Please, take a seat. Sorry, I don’t have a second chair.”

Arthur shook his head and sat down. “It’s fine. I mean, I barely unpacked my things at home yet.” He took one of the mugs and sipped silently, before his gaze fell onto Mary’s drawing Alfred had hung over his desk. “What’s that?”

“What? Oh, that.” Alfred forced an embarrassed smile. He felt like he should have taken it down before he let Arthur into his room. But it was too late now. Alfred had to fess up. “Oh, uhm…” He wasn’t sure if Arthur would like that story. “Well, you see, when I was younger, my wrist used to say Mary Kirkland and not Arthur, so I tried imagining her and my mom laminated it for me. But when I was in high school, her name became smudged over, then faded completely before yours slowly started to appear. Sorry, I- should have taken it down.”

Alfred turned to take off the picture, but something Arthur said made him halt. Or, rather, how he said it.  _ “The name changed?” _ Arthur sounded excited, almost happy, as if he couldn’t believe what he had heard.  _ “It really changed?” _ Alfred turned back to Arthur to find him leaned forward eagerly with an unreadable expression on his face. Mostly excitement and disbelief, but a hint of something else as well.

“Yeah, it did. That’s why I almost didn’t like you, because you know, I waited for Mary all the time, but then it changed all of a sudden, but you seem like a cool dude, so now I feel sorry for letting Mary cloud my judgement of you.”

“It’s fine.” Arthur set down his mug and stripped himself of his sweater vest before starting to unbutton his shirt. Alfred started to panic internally, did Arthur plan to make Alfred like him by having sex with him? But then Arthur dropped his shirt and had Alfred stare at the tanktop he was wearing underneath for a couple of moments in confusion. “It’s a binder.” Arthur’s words snapped Alfred out of his stupor only for him to see Arthur offering a small smile. “I used to be Mary.”

Oh. So that’s what it was. What it had been the whole time. It explained Arthur's reaction of Alfred's soulmate tattoo a lot more. “So you never died.” Alfred let out a sigh of relief and couldn’t help but hug Arthur tightly. His soulmate never changed. He just became himself.

“What? Of course I didn’t-  _ Oh _ .” Arthur patted Alfred’s back awkwardly. “I’m sorry I made you worry. I was just going through a lot.”

\--

“So, what does Arthur Kirkland look like to child Alfred?” It had been a few months since Alfred met Arthur, and he finally decided to make a new drawing to hang over the one of ‘Mary’. Now he sat here with a white sheet of paper and an old box of crayons, the same kind he had when he was young.

“Hmm….” Alfred drew a circle. “Really pretty.” He said and took a yellow crayon before drawing a mop of hair onto the circle. “And he’s from England, because Kirkland is an English name, so he’s gotta be blond.”

“Mhm.” Arthur watched, amused, a smile playing on his lips.

“No peeking!” Alfred hid the drawing from Arthur before changing to a green crayon. “And you know, England’s got really pretty forests and gardens, so he’s gotta have green eyes.” Alfred took a black crayon and scribbled two large eyebrows over the green eye blotches. He remembered how his mom always said his eyes were the most beautiful thing in the world. But for once she was wrong. Because Alfred knew Arthur's eyes were the most beautiful thing in the world. “And he has big eyebrows, because everyone has little flaws and if he were too perfect, he wouldn’t exist and I’d have no soulmate. But that’s okay, because they bring out his eyes and I find them really cute.” Alfred leaned back to kiss Arthur’s eyebrows before turning back to the drawing and taking a red crayon, drawing a huge smile. “And he’s got a really pretty smile because he loves me and is always happy to see me.” Alfred looked at the picture with a smile. “Yep, he’s perfect! Now we gotta ask mom to show us how to write Arthur and then she puts it in lemonade.”

Arthur laughed and kissed Alfred’s cheek. “You’re such a dork.”

“Mmh, I know you can’t resist me.”

“Oh, can I?”

\--

Alfred later hung the laminated picture over the old one he had made when his wrist had still said Mary. He took both pictures with him when he and Arthur moved together. And again when they moved into a bigger home to have room for kids (and the four cats Arthur had wanted to adopt). It was a story he loved to tell, how he thought he lost his soulmate and learnt his soulmate never changed. It was just his name that did.

**Author's Note:**

> Alfred drawing with crayons is adorable. End of the discussion.


End file.
